Through the Looking Glass: A Feminist's Life in Biology / Muriel Lederman 417

Medicine

That Disorder: An Introduction / Alice Wexler 435

A Textbook Pregnancy / Perri Klass 444

Math, Psychology, and Science Education

Personal Thinking / Seymour Papert 455

Selected Bibliography 467

Contributors 483

Ruth Behar

Diane P. Freedman

David Bleich

Carlos L. Dews

Merrill Black

David Richman

Bonnie Tusmith

Donald M. Murray

Carla Peterson

Robert D. Marcus

James Cone

Laura Duhan Kaplan

Sara Ruddick

Eunice Lipton

K. Anthony Appiah

Peter Hamlin

Julie Tharp

Deborah Lefkowitz

Michael Dorris

Laura B. Delind

Patricia Williams

Brenda Daly

Naomi Weisstein

Muriel Lederman

Alice Wexler

Perri Klass

Seymour Papert

Olivia Frey

"[A]n exciting, important, and well-edited collection of essays. . . . The book is a pleasure to read; the selections are gracefully written and provide good models for how to incorporate autobiographical elements into scholarship. . . . I highly recommend Autobiographical Writing; it is an insightful and inspiring volume that belongs on the bookshelves of any scholar, student, or interested reader who has ever pondered the connection between the autobiographical and the academic, in other words, the connection between who we are and what we study." — Gesa E. Kirsch, NWSA Journal

Reviews

"[A]n exciting, important, and well-edited collection of essays. . . . The book is a pleasure to read; the selections are gracefully written and provide good models for how to incorporate autobiographical elements into scholarship. . . . I highly recommend Autobiographical Writing; it is an insightful and inspiring volume that belongs on the bookshelves of any scholar, student, or interested reader who has ever pondered the connection between the autobiographical and the academic, in other words, the connection between who we are and what we study." —Gesa E. Kirsch, NWSA Journal

“This anthology of autobiographical writing by scholars with a range of ties to the academy, this mosaic of brave, graceful, and compassionate voices, skillfully edited by Diane P. Freedman and Olivia Frey, bears testimony to the strength of an intellectual movement that is changing the way scholarship is being done. . . . [T]his book asserts the importance of a common project, a shared commitment to a way of knowing as well as a way of telling.” — Ruth Behar, from the foreword

“This collection brings a new kind of scholarship into focus: research that has a human face and speaks with a human voice. In these essays, knowledge comes alive for the reader because it has sprung from the lived experience of the investigator. The contributors are pioneers in their fields, blazing trails for future work in their disciplines.” — Jane Tompkins, author of, A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned

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Description

Autobiographical Writing Across the Disciplines reveals the extraordinary breadth of the intellectual movement toward self-inclusive scholarship. Presenting exemplary works of criticism incorporating personal narratives, this volume brings together twenty-seven essays from scholars in literary studies and history, mathematics and medicine, philosophy, music, film, ethnic studies, law, education, anthropology, religion, and biology. Pioneers in the development of the hybrid genre of personal scholarship, the writers whose work is presented here challenge traditional modes of inquiry and ways of knowing. In assembling their work, editors Diane P. Freedman and Olivia Frey have provided a rich source of reasons for and models of autobiographical criticism.

The editors’ introduction presents a condensed history of academic writing, chronicles the origins of autobiographical criticism, and emphasizes the role of feminism in championing the value of personal narrative to disciplinary discourse. The essays are all explicitly informed by the identities of their authors, among whom are a feminist scientist, a Jewish filmmaker living in Germany, a potential carrier of Huntington’s disease, and a doctor pregnant while in medical school. Whether describing how being a professor of ethnic literature necessarily entails being an activist, how music and cooking are related, or how a theology is shaped by cultural identity, the contributors illuminate the relationship between their scholarly pursuits and personal lives and, in the process, expand the boundaries of their disciplines.

About The Author(s)

Diane P. Freedman is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author of An Alchemy of Genres: Cross-Genre Writing by American Feminist Poet-Critics, editor of Millay at 100: A Critical Reappraisal, and coeditor of The Teacher’s Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy.

Olivia Frey, retired from her position as Professor of English at St. Olaf College, is now the lead administrator at the Village School in Northfield, Minnesota. Freedman and Frey are the coeditors (with Frances Murphy Zauhar) of The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism, published by Duke University Press.